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So, it’s Fantasy week here at RPGnet. I have a few days to go, and haven’t really thought of anything to review. C.W. Richeson (RPGnet’s staff reviewer) said that reviews of games that hadn’t been reviewed before would benefit the community more, but I felt if I really wanted to benefit the community, I’d post a review from the heart. As such, this review is as utterly subjective as I choose to be. Since you clicked the link you already know what game I picked.
As of today, it has three reviews on RPGnet (perhaps more if somebody beat me to the punch for Fantasy Week). The last review of Dragonlance SAGA was nearly 8 years ago, before I’d ever even heard of RPGnet. I’ve been active in the forum for several years, and lurked a few years before that, and never written a review until recently. This will be my first RPG review. As I said above, I am not really detailing mechanics or examples of play, mostly my reactions and thoughts on the game. I figured that since it has three reviews, the mechanics and whatnot have already been covered, though I confess I haven’t read any of the other reviews (as I already know how I feel about the game).
Sometime back in 1996, my Junior High years, I bought a game for a friend so he could have something fun to do on band road trips. Honestly that’s what I thought of Dragonlance SAGA when I bought it, that it was some sort of portable D&D. I knew nothing of the Dragonlance setting, the massive controversy over the Fifth Age, or anything else. I saw a Fighter/Mage/Thief on the cover, with an enormous red dragon crashing down behind them, and I thought simply “whoa, cool little box”.
To this day, I still believe any RPG that comes in a box to have an edge over one that doesn’t, because SAGA’s box kicks ass. The box looks like a book, strangely enough, one of those old style locking tomes you see in the movies and pictures of D&D wizards. The “lock” is actually a Velcro latch that holds the hinged top of the box shut (it opens like a chest), making it rather unique in the world of boxed-sets.
As my friend opened his present, I immediately wished I had kept the treasure to myself. The box contained multiple booklets, an 82 card Fate Deck for task resolution (all unique cards, mind you), 18 character cards (some obvious NPCs, others quite playable), a full color map, and a GM Screen-esque reference sheet for easy look-up. I still look at the back of the box from time to time and wonder how they priced it at $25.
So we sit down and make characters by the book. Characters have 8 Stats, which are basically split up into Attack and Defense for four different conflict categories: Melee, Ranged, Divine Magic, and Arcane Magic. Each stat also had its own non-combat related connotations as well: Strength (Melee Attack) helped bust down doors, Presence (Divine Defense) showed leadership skill and persuasiveness. Each Stat also had its own suit of 9 cards in the Fate Deck, and there was a tenth suit of Dragons that was basically meant to always be bad news. Character creation involved shuffling the deck, dealing out 12 cards, then assigning 8 of them to your stats and using the rest for Nature, Demeanor, Quests (basically XP), and Wealth. If the suit of a card matched the suit of your stat, you had an A code in that stat, meaning you had more training with that stat (and it gave advantages like magic use, heightened senses, heavier armor use, shield use, weapon use, etc).
We quickly figured out that the designers had character creation wrong, because it was a good chance a character built to have high codes in everything, due to the even amount of cards split among all the stats. For example: The scale of coding for abilities goes (best-worst) A/B/C/D/X. I just dealt out a character with only 2 “B” codes, the rest are “A” codes. I could also sacrifice one of those good ratings to have a larger hand size, which is obviously a better decision than a higher stat or Nature/Demeanor. Races were all messed up, too. Elves get a bonus to spot and fight with sword or bow, while Minotaurs get a bonus to sailing. Yeah, that’s right: sailing.
Gosh, I still rant and rave as soon as Dragonlance’s system comes up. I had to catch myself there so I wouldn’t talk bad about the tertiary systems for the rest of the review.
So the first house rule I could ever remember making involved a PC race getting a bonus to avoid getting lost in mazelike conditions and a bonus to the battle axe. An inelegant solution, but what can you expect of a 13 year old who didn’t know anything about any games outside of AD&D2? I could go through a few dozen other things I don’t like and house rules I made to compensate, but I’m reviewing the game, not my changes of it.
While I spent some time there making fun of the character creation, I really didn’t get to the next chapter until years later. See, shortly after I bought this box set for my friend, he made it clear that we were enemies (for some reason or another, I have had a few best friends who turncoated on me, strangely). A few years passed, and we sort of got back in touch for a few days, but a dumb argument killed that. I’ve tried getting back in touch with him recently, but no luck.
Cut to some years later. I see an auction on eBay for an unopened box of Fifth Age, Heroes of Steel, Heroes of Defiance, Heroes of Hope, Heroes of Sorcery, and The Last Tower going for $30. I bid, I win, and I receive the box in the mail, along with a few purchases I made from various online booksellers (Citadel of Light, Wings of Fury, The Saga Companion, The Bestiary, and Palanthas). That’s right, I bought the whole set online once I was reminded that it existed. Why did I purchase it?
I heard some things, and was reminded of the rules for how combat and experience worked. SAGA works with a hand of cards which represent character health, experience, and a bit of narrative control of actions. These days, that sort of jargon appeals to me, and I remembered what fun it was for my friend to open his box and count his loot, so (being a completist) I decided to get the whole damn set.
Once it arrived, I tore the plastic off the Fifth Age box. I used some old Magic deck sleeves to protect the Fate Deck, then shuffled out another character. I ran into the same problem as last time, of all the luck. So I read.
I read all the supplements, especially the Companion, and what did I find? Several magic systems, several different ideas for chargen, and a LOT of info on Krynn. The game had now lost it’s mysticality to me. It was no longer strange and wonderful, I knew what was there. But the designers still seemingly didn’t. All the added rules, errata, reworked rules, and trash-canned rules gave me a good idea that they were searching for it, though. Well, up until the demise of the line.
Conclusion: It is a diamond in the rough. Among all the tertiary elements of the system, the core had shown through as a simple, brilliant little mechanism for cooperative roleplay in standard fantasy. The problem is building tertiary elements that actually live up to the core. Quite simply, they never did it and I would be very hard pressed to do it myself. I have used it to build a fun game for me and my friends, though.
Style 5: There’s just no beating the style of this game. It just oozes from every surface. The character sheet, the Fate Deck, and the map just scream at you. Even the box rocks. Outside of perhaps Everway (they nearly tie, but I still think Dragonlance has the advantage), this game has the most style of any game I’ve ever seen.
Substance 2: There is a brilliant system here, one worthy of 5 Substance, but it is one you will have to be inspired into digging out and polishing yourself. This game inspired my playing style for several years after I initially played it, but by the time I owned it I could see many flaws in the game as is due to my extensive experience with roleplaying in general. I have heard of people who play this game by the book, but I’ve never met one (and never done so myself).
